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The desert called so we pulled out the long boats and headed down the Baja way, first loading enough boats to take full advantage of both coasts, then cramming the truck full of every camping comfort it would take, right down to a hand-cranked margarita blender.

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Sean Morley knows a few things about going fast. He honed his forward stroke technique as a flatwater sprint racer on the British junior national team, but has made his biggest mark traveling far and fast in challenging conditions. He’s held speed records for crossing the Irish Sea, circumnavigating Vancouver Island, and paddling 4,500 miles around Great Britain and Ireland, solo.

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Last October I spent five days engulfed in the beauty of the Adirondack Mountains, paddling the lakes of the Saint Regis Canoe Area with a couple good friends. This was our first overnight paddling experience in the area; I came away with a few bits of knowledge to pass on to the next paddlers planning this perfect fall escape.

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The Maine Island Trail Association (MITA), which oversees a 375-mile waterway for small boaters from the New Hampshire border to Canada, just got a shot in the arm from L.L. Bean. The venerable outdoor gear and apparel maker, founded in 1912 by Leon Leonwood Bean, recently gave MITA and its Wild Islands Campaign a $100,000 grant to support its efforts to protect the trail system. It’s far from the first funds the company has awarded to the association. In 1987, L.L.Bean issued a grant to create the association, in partnership with the Maine Department of Conservation and the Island Institute. It was from this that both MITA and the Maine Island Trail — America’s first recreational water trail, an establishment founded on the notion that visitors could be entrusted with the islands’ care — were born. “For decades, L.L.Bean and the Maine Island Trail Association have shared the common goal of being good stewards of the environment,” says L.L.Bean chairman Shawn Gorman. “It’s in everyone’s best interest to ensure that we all have clean, pristine and accessible places to recreate in the outdoors. The Maine Island Trail Association is to be commended for their efforts to make the great outdoors even

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A month into their ambitious nine-month, 5,200-mile route, the six-man Rediscover North America crew highlights the first 27 days paddling up the Atchafalaya River, and crossing over to begin the long slog up the mighty Mississippi.

Mass Stinger

A new production mold offers paddlers the production boat

Liquidlogic made some dreams come true this month with the release of their production Stinger. Born from the desire to win The Green Race, the Stinger has gone through several changes since its first release in 2007 and now has a production mold to meet the mass demand.

The Stinger descends from the Remix 100, which was first built in 2007. “It was a last-second decision to have a race boat for the Green Race that year,” Shane Benedict, cofounder of Liquidlogic, said. Liquidlogic continued making the Remix 100s for its team members for two years until Benedict decided to go with a dramatic change to its design.

“I added eight inches of length in the stern of a boat that was already almost 12-feet long,” Benedict said. He made the redesign for a couple reasons, the main one being speed. He noticed that whitewater race boats, when taken up to speed, really start to bog down in the stern. Companies had been working to fight that sitting action, and Benedict found that by adding the length to the stern, it kept the bow from rising. “The place you really see the dramatic difference between the Stinger and other boats is in the slides below Gorilla,” he said. The Stinger tends to skip across the pools at the base of each drop without loosing speed.

The team saw they were on to something when they made that change. Local paddler Adriene Levknecht had been winning in the Remix 100, but they started seeing wins in other classes with the Stinger. Isaac Levinson and Mike Dawson were taking the men’s class, and Keith Sprinkle dominated in hands paddle.

Even then, the Stinger still had a little way to go. Each year, it underwent changes as the team got to know more about the boat. “This last year I flattened the hull quite a bit,” Benedict said. “We knew we were fast, but it was sometimes a tough boat to control for some paddlers.” By flattening the hull it allowed paddlers to correct more quickly on mostly forward strokes, which added more speed through the rapids. The boat has not gained much flatwater speed, but the control and accuracy did affect the whitewater speed.

The Stinger was designed solely to win the Green Race. As more people outside the Asheville, NC area got their hands on the boat for their hometown runs, they found other uses for it. Among those “other uses” were big booming enders, surfing long fast waves and covering lots of territory with little effort. In fact, one of Benedict’s favorite activities every year is to drop in at Tumblehome on the Gauley and bomb enders for a couple hours.

But “the one indescribable final detail that can’t be measured is that feeling of speed that those who have only paddled since boats were under nine feet just don’t understand.”